Today sucked. It was the type of day that makes me more than happy, but actually elated, to be graduating so soon. It’s the type of day where, in the short breaks I take from the pile of work towering over me, I can’t decide which friend I need to comfort first and ultimately settle going back to work. It’s the day where everyone will actually run around the hallway, like a chicken with its head cut off, as we frantically glue elaborately cut pieces of paper onto a tri-fold for a class we all hate.

It’s also a day just like the nights when we have two essays due the next day and a group chat is formed around 1 am. It was a day where, in all of the stress, emotional, and lack of energy, I felt a stronger bond with my peers than I have since we had an IB essay due last June. It’s the type of day that, five years down the road, I won’t remember as the stressful day in which 14 tri-folds were constructed, but instead as our last Valentine’s Day of high school. It will be a fond memory, oddly enough, and knowing my tendency to remember the unnecessary, one of a set I will probably reminisce about with my loved ones many years into the future. Or with an old friend who I see in a grocery store 10 years down the road, and then debate for minutes on whether or not to say hello. It’s a day like today that reminds me how much I truly love my friends, and how Valentine’s day isn’t about romantic love, it’s just about love.